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The Education Of Oprah Winfrey: How She Saved Her South African School

Winfrey’s school began as a rather outlandish promise. In 2000 Winfrey and longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham were vacationing at the home of Nelson Mandela on the country’s Western Cape. For ten days Winfrey and the former South African president swapped stories, exchanged ideas and passed newspaper sections back and forth. When the topic turned to poverty, Winfrey spoke up. It’s a subject she knows something about.

Growing up in Kosciusko, Miss., Winfrey’s childhood wasn’t far removed from the average South African. She lived on a farm without indoor plumbing and watched her grandmother, who largely raised her, hand-wash her clothes. At 9 she was raped by a cousin; at 14 she gave birth to a son, who died after childbirth. Her way out came in the form of a federal program that gained her access to a rich suburban school, where she was one of only a handful of African-Americans. Each day she bounced between a home of poverty and a classroom of possibilities. Here she discovered a knack for public speaking and debate, which earned her a part-time radio gig and, later, a scholarship to Tennessee State University.

When she started making real money–millions, then billions, from her eponymous talk show and subsequent media empire–she vowed to pay for other poor black kids to go to college. And she has: To date she’s shelled out around $400 million toward educational causes, including more than 400 scholarships to Atlanta’s Morehouse College. Sitting on the floor at Mandela’s house, in thrall to her hero and saddened as he described the state of schooling in his country, she vowed to take her giving a step further.

Winfrey pledged $10 million toward a South African school then and there. “When you go to Nelson Mandela’s house, what do you take?” she says. “You can’t bring a candle.” Ten years ago this December she broke ground in Henley-on-Klip, until then an unremarkable cluster of ranch-style homes 40 miles south of Johannesburg. When Winfrey and her team started recruiting in 2006, she was adamant that she’d accept only the brightest but most disadvantaged kids: those at the top of their public school class but from households with an income of less than $950 a month.

By the time Mashadi, Bongeka and the 150 other members of the first two classes arrived in 2007, that $10 million had grown to $40 million, as Winfrey turned 52 acres of scrubland into a campus closer to Ivy League standards than even the plush suburban school she had attended. “It started out as an emotional giveback,” says Winfrey. “It has developed into a way of life for me. What it really is, is an investment in leadership and an investment in the future of a country. That’s how I now see it. I don’t look at it as, ‘Oh, gee, my little school.’”

Touring the school, it’s not difficult to see how the costs spiraled. A brand-new swimming pool adjoins a workout room where the “learners,” as they’re called here, take spinning classes on stationary bikes. The administrative building could double as a gallery of South African art, and the auditorium feels like a Broadway theater. As with all aspects of her work, Winfrey is a perfectionist. When the school officially opened in January 2007, groundskeepers sprayed the dry, yellow grass with green dye in preparation for the arrival of dignitaries like Mandela and celebrity friends like Diane Sawyer and Spike Lee. “It stained your shoes,” laughs Sam Blake, director of operations at the school and Winfrey’s eyes and ears on the ground. The image of that veneer would quickly come back to bite.

The school wasn’t exactly popular in Henley-on-Klip. Blake fielded noise complaints from neighbors who claimed the sound of tennis balls bouncing on the school’s courts was disturbing them. “I got phone calls saying, ‘I hope all your trees die,’” Blake says. “There are people who didn’t want us here, 150 black girls in an all-white area.” Townspeople idled in their cars, hoping to get a glimpse of Winfrey’s chosen few. “They watched the girls play soccer and netball,” Blake says. “We put up fences. Oprah had us put hedges up, too.”

The venture was also greeted with uncertainty by some American media outlets. Why was Winfrey spending $40 million on one school when she could build a bunch for that price? Why were the girls sleeping on 200-thread-count sheets? Why were there chandeliers hanging from the library ceiling and brightly colored mosaic tile pillars outside the cafeteria? Blake grimaces when he’s reminded of those early articles.

“When you walk into a beautiful place, you think better of yourself,” he explains simply. Walking the perimeter of the campus, he describes the first batch of blueprints from local school authorities, who’d leased Winfrey the land. She wasn’t pleased. “She said it looked like a chicken coop,” Blake laughs. Winfrey severed ties with the state and decided to go it alone, hiring the architects behind Johannesburg’s famous Apartheid Museum. She donned jeans and a hard hat and oversaw every aspect of construction. She thought of the little things: the tubs of umbrellas outside each building for use during South Africa’s rainy season, when it pours almost nonstop for 40 days. They’re green, her favorite color, to match the girls’ uniforms.

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We as South Africans are happy that Oprah plowed back to our communities and by far has became an instanse of a caring and sower to charity and we are inspired to follow her. We also extend our warm gratitude to this woman of virtue, may the good Lord meet her needs and help her prosper in all her efforts to make change happen. We salute you.

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An excellent, well spoken article that is a perfect match for the woman who understands the necessity for building community one person at a time. So very inspirational! Ms. Winfrey continuously sets a glorious standard for all of us.

Well, one thing that isn’t really discussed is the ability for Africans to replicate the process of building and maintaining high quality schools. Oprah really took the move a mountain approach here and also didn’t account for many cultural differences between USA young women and Africans. In terms of replication, for example, in Brazil they had Brizola founded huge massive schools in many communities, yet little funds to pay teachers, buy textbooks and often poor children would simply come to school to eat some rice and beans and then run away back to their slums. Now, in Brazil, assistance is more available to poor students who somehow finish high school and wish to have technical training or attend college.

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